My Seductive Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page A

movin’.”
    “Yea, get yer arse movin’,” Moses, Frank’s apprentice and the second-worst man she knew, mimicked. He slapped her on the bottom, letting his hand linger as he’d been inclined to do lately. She smacked his hand away and glared at him. Not that it did any good. He returned her glare with a cheeky smile and a wiggle of his bushy red eyebrows. Her stomach flipped over in disgust.
    Frank snorted and stepped between them. “Keep yer hands off Sophia until ye’ve the money to pay me for her. Once ye get the money we discussed, she’s all yers.”
    Sophia clenched her teeth on the nasty words she wanted to spew. Moses―what a colossally ironic name for the disgusting excuse for a human being―would never be her husband. She’d rather burn to death than let that man touch her. But no need for dramatics. She was going to be gone very soon. Very soon, indeed.
    “Get goin’, Sophia,” Frank snapped and gave her a shove.
    Tripping as she walked away from the bar, she smacked into someone coming through the door. They hit hard, causing the breath to swoosh out of her lungs and her balance to shift too far back. Her slipper caught on the raised wood plank that Frank, in all his slothful glory, had yet to fix. Sophia teetered backward and knocked into Moses, who snaked his hand around her torso directly under her breasts. She looked to Frank to help, but he was no longer there.
    “Get off me, you beast,” she hissed.
    “Come on, luv, ye know ye want it.”
    The racket from the patrons increased around Sophia, right along with her pulse, as she turned her head to glare back at Moses. “I want to gouge your eyes out. That’s what I want.”
    Moses’s hand slithered upward, and she went rigid, her mind racing to calculate if she could kick back far enough to get him where it would really wound him.
    “Release the lady.” The man’s unfamiliar voice was as cold as the frozen waters of the Tyne River.
    Sophia whipped her gaze in the direction of the voice and met blackness. Confusion blanketed her mind for a moment, and then she realized she was staring at a topcoat. A very expensive one by the look of it. It appeared so silky, and the cut molded to the man’s broad chest. She trailed her gaze up and over his wide shoulders and to the face that belonged to the commanding voice. He fit his voice perfectly with a strong jaw, angular cheekbones, and dark eyes, at once assessing and calculating.
    Those eyes, so dark brown they were almost black, flickered over her, then settled on Moses before narrowing into twin daggers. “Either you’re deaf or stupid.” The man cocked his head. “I feel certain you can hear so...” A slow, taunting smile stretched his full lips.
    Sophia’s heart thumped at his audacity and foolishness. Moses was likely to blow any second. She tried to jerk out of Moses’s grip to avoid being hit in the crossfire, but he tightened his hold.
    “Mind yer own business, ye hear?” he spat at the man.
    The man’s face grew stony. “I’m afraid I can’t do that—honor and all. But you wouldn’t know about that.”
    Sophia’s arm pulsed with pain as Moses gripped her harder. “You snobby aristocrats er all the same. Thinkin’ you can order everyone around. I’ll hold this here wench any way I see fit.”
    The man’s brows arched upward as his gaze landed on Sophia and trailed slowly down her body, then back up to her face. She raised her chin as she met his dark gaze. “I’m no wench.”
    The corners of the man’s mouth lifted into barely a smile. “It’s plain to see you’re a lady,” he said in a deep, smooth voice. “A very lovely one at that.”
    He was a liar, to be sure, but he was a nice liar. Her cheeks grew warm at the false but smooth compliment, and she couldn’t help reaching up and tugging on her short hair.
    The gentleman stepped closer to her and Moses, and she got a whiff of a pine-scented soap. Likely expensive rich-person soap. It smelled rather